It’s been a while since we rallied as a community to improve the state of information retrieval entries on Wikipedia. There are 86 entries in Category:Information Retrieval, and a number of these could use some help. But the one that strikes me as most in need of attention is the Enterprise search entry.
What is so wrong with this entry? Perhaps a better question to ask is what is right with it! But I’ll summarize my objections as follows:
- The entry is so focused on enumerating vendors that it barely even describes what enterprise search is. Yes, there is some debate about how to define enterprise search, but in that case a Wikipedia entry should “teach the controversy” as it were.
- The classification of vendors isn’t particularly informative. I don’t see how describing a vendor as a major vendor, a specialized vendor, a superplatform, etc. helps anyone understand the technology space. For example, I cannot figure out what makes a vendor “major” in this taxonomy.
- The entry seems to largely reflect the haphazard edits of vendors and their surrogates, rather than any principled analysis of the space.
So I’d really like to fix it! But, given my association with Endeca, I’m not sure how much I can do personally without drawing accusations of conflict of interest. Perhaps the readership here can help out. My goal here is not to create an entry that is some pro-Endeca or anti-Endeca’s competitors. In fact, I have half a mind to remove all specific vendor references, or perhaps to move them to a separate List of Enterprise Search Vendors entry. What I really want to see is an entry that helps people understand what enterprise search is.
Please chime in if you are interested in being part of this effort. I’m happy to pitch in myself, but I feel the effort has to be collaborative in order to address the understandable concerns about conflict of interest.
5 responses so far ↓
1 Andreas Ringdal // Sep 20, 2008 at 2:34 pm
Great initative. Personally, I think the entire vendors list should have been removed from the article. At least move i to a separate entry.
Some points to include
- description of what enterprise search is, and what it is not.
– what separates Enterprise search from desktop and web search.
– problems that one meets on the process of aquiring an enterprise search solution
– Some description of the various approches to enterpsie search such as complete out of the box solutions, enterprise search plattforms and stand alone components (aka do it yourself). Indexed security vs real time security check vs no security.
– The role of federated search is not mentioned at all in the current entry.
There are a lot of good points in the Beyond Search blog from Steve Arnold that also should be included.
Andreas
2 Daniel Tunkelang // Sep 20, 2008 at 6:03 pm
I think one of the challenges is a lack of consensus on what defines enterprise search–either as a set of information seeking problems or as a set of solutions for those problems. My preference for the Wikipedia entry would be to err on the side of inclusion and to try to enumerate both.
I also think the entry should shy away from being a how-to document. It could link to notable how-to documents, but anything more is likely to reflect a strong vendor or analyst bias.
3 Searcher, but not of the enterprise type // Sep 22, 2008 at 10:16 am
Post some sources for it here, or better yet to the talk page and it will be improved.
4 Daniel Tunkelang // Sep 22, 2008 at 10:20 am
I did post a couple of sources at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Enterprise_search#Cleanup_of_red-linked_items:
1) Enterprise Search Sourcebook: http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/infotoday/enterprisesearchsourcebook08/index.php
2) 20+ Differences Between Internet vs. Enterprise Search – And Why You Should Care: http://www.ideaeng.com/pub/entsrch/2008/number_02/article01.html
5 Enterprise Search on Wikipedia: A Work in Progress | The Noisy Channel // Sep 27, 2008 at 9:02 pm
[...] week, I put out a call for help to clean up the Enterprise Search entry on Wikipedia. I decided to answer that call myself by [...]
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